In 2015, India was termed as the ‘shining star’ in the global economy by Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, then Commerce and Industry Minister when India continued to grow at a fast pace while major economies facing a slowdown. One of the significant competitive advantages that India has is its cheap labour cost, which makes its products competitive in the exports market, and Child labour is a significant contributor to the reduced labour costs. This statement might seem far-fetched at first, but the historical data tells a different story.

Child labour constituted 13% of the workforce in India as per the 2001 Census. While child labour is a widespread phenomenon in India, it is not understood correctly. Quite a few people are not sure about the legal age to work in India, while some believe that child labour is limited to the employment of children in hazardous occupations like mining etc. International Labour Organization defines it as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” It includes work that impedes with the opportunity to attend the school or forces them to leave it prematurely.

Current Situation

According to the 2011 Census, 10.1 million children between the age of 5 to 14 years were engaged in child labour, and around 45% of them were girls. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar region alone have more than 3 million child labourers, and a significant portion of these children works in the hazardous hand-knotted carpet industry where, in the past, NGOs have reported cases of children being beaten by metal rods, burnt with branding irons and hanged from top of trees to discourage them from running. Both the central and the state governments have turned a blind eye to the situation as this carpet belt constitutes around 80% of Indian carpet exports.

Factors leading to Child Labour

There are deep-rooted problems in our society which are contributing to child labour. Poverty and illiteracy of parents are the major factors leading to child labour. They are also responsible for other problems such as lack of awareness about the harmful effects of child labour and inaccessibility to quality education, which compounds the problem even further. There are other issues as well like family indebtedness, which pushes a child into bonded labour.

Past Initiatives

Over the past two decades, several programmes and initiatives, such as calls for the boycott of goods involving child labour and introduction of social certification of products as child laboor free, are seen as potential weapons against the use of child labour. In the past, we had seen consumer boycotts across the globe, from the Swadeshi movement in India to boycotting products manufactured by slave labour in the United States. These movements were reasonably successful in creating awareness among the general masses.

Even in the recent past, boycotting campaigns by several NGOs against multinational companies regarding the working conditions of labourers employed by their suppliers have put pressure on these MNCs to take a step to improve the situation of these workers. When it comes to child labour, these practices have been ineffective and might aggravate the problem rather than mitigating it in certain circumstances. These are the possible drawbacks of these initiatives:
 

• When we boycott particular products, we are decreasing the demand for labour in that industry while the supply of labourers remains constant, which pushes the wages of adults down or worse, creates unemployment. This makes the condition of low-income families worse, forcing the children in these families to seek employment and thus increasing child labour in the long term.
• Consumer boycotts make the child labour undesirable or, at least it intends to, which leads to a drop in wages of children. In a country like India, where 22% of the population is below the poverty line, the income from a child’s work might be vital for the survival of most impoverished of the families. Thus, it might force these families to increase the number of children they send to work, which would lead to an increase in child labour.
• The pressure from the consumers to boycott the products might lead to the elimination of children from companies. These children might join other sectors to maintain the family income, which is more dangerous or less well paid. We witnessed a similar situation when Maharashtra government’s ban on dance bars pushed some bar dancers into prostitution due to lack of other employment options.
• These methods are ineffective against child labour in the informal sector, which we see in places like houses, shops and cafes etc. This is evident from the fact that child labourers had increased in urban India from 1.3 million in 2001 to 2 million in 2011.

Way Forward

The initiatives like boycotting of products are more of a band-aid solution to a problem which is deep-rooted in our society. We need some fundamental changes to make a difference on the ground level. It is a human rights issue because of which the children are deprived of the dignity they deserve and are not able to realize their full potential and to combat this issue we need the government to play a more pro-active role. India needs to adopt a uniform minimum age for employment of children, which is denied under the pretence of constitutional constraints. Other social institutions like NGOs should play the role of a watchdog in the process.

The provision of programmes for subsidies, like income-generating programmes, is required to pull these children out of the vicious cycle of poverty, illiteracy and child labour. We need effective policies from the government so that we will be able to provide improved schooling to the children from less fortunate backgrounds. Provision for food, cash stipends, cloths and skill development programmes should be adopted to encourage children to join schools.

We need better implementation of the policies that are already in place to make education truly accessible and affordable for everyone which can get children away from the exploitative workplaces to an environment which is conducive to their physical and mental development. The changes in economic policies should be augmented with overall social change in the attitude of general masses towards child labour and the spread of education, and only then we will be able to curtail the exploitation of young children.

References
 

• Child Labour | UNICEF. (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from http://unicef.in/whatwedo/21/child-labour
• Caesar-Leo, M. (1999). Child labour: the most visible type of child abuse and neglect in India. Child Abuse Review, 8(2), 75-86. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0852(199903/04)8:2<75::aid-car508>3.0.co;2-a
• What is child labour (IPEC). (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang–en/index.htm
• India a ‘shining star’ in global economy: Nirmala Sitharaman. (2019). Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-trade/india-a-shining-star-in-global-economy-nirmala-sitharaman/articleshow/49051164.cms?from=mdr
• Ballet, J., Bhukuth, A., & Carimentrand, A. (2011). Child Labour and Responsible Consumers. Business & Society, 53(1), 71-104. doi: 10.1177/0007650311416070
• Zislis, E., Defense, C., & Walia, A. (2019). The Truth About Our Clothes & Where They Come From – What You Will Find In A Typical Western Home. Retrieved 17 July 2019, from https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/02/08/the-truth-about-our-clothes-where-they-come-from-what-you-will-find-in-a-typical-western-home/

Courtesy: Counter View

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‘Hum Saab Ek Hain’ are post–card size, fourcolour stickers conceived of by Waqar Khan, a resident of Dharavi, a large hutment area (also referred to as the largest slum community in Asia) in central Mumbai. Having printed them at his own cost, he has distributed them in thousands among Mumbaikars who cynically forgot this simple homily and for ten days in December 1992 and a few weeks in January 1993 allowed the threads of a shared and cosmopolitan life to be torn to shreds.

“Das din ke andar hamne hamare mohalle ki ek galli ke aath naujawanon ki jaan gawayee. Uske baad andar se kuch hua aur hame laga ki jootkar hame kuch karna chahiye” (“In the space of ten days our neighbourhood lost eight young lives. Something stirred within me then and I felt I had to seriously do something”.)

That is how, in post– 1992–1993 Bombay, Waqar Khan’s active involvement in Dharavi’s local community began. It was the sheer brutality of the violence that shook him and he felt that he had to devote some time, on a sustained basis to improve relations, increase communications between different communities.

“Gaon kee Ramlila mein hamne Ram ka roop ek adarshputra, praja ka poojya raja mein dekha tha, magar Ram ke naam par loot maar, khoon-kharaba? Kya Ramlila ka Ram aur Ayodhya ka Ram alag alag hai kya?” (“In my village, I imbibed the ideal of Lord Ram through the Ramlila where he is depicted as an ideal son, an revered king of the people. But loot, murder and bloodshed in his name? Is the Ram of the Ramlila different from the Ram of Ayodhya?”)
Dharavi was the worst affected locality in the December 1992 round of violence. The schisms ran deep. And one of the legacies of the time was a deewar, a wall, erected between the Hindu and Muslim communities to prevent further interaction and also, violence.

When some semblance of peace was restored, the mohalla ekta (neighbourhood) committees were formed to aid interaction between communities and also with the police. Waqar Khan, began to take an active part. It was here that he met with Bhau Korde, another resident of Dharavi.

Khan and Korde were drawn to each other from the first meeting itself and over the years this has matured into a deep and effective partnership between a local, self–made businessman turned peacemaker and a schoolteacher turned social activist.

Their mutual closeness and their persistence, born out of the belief in and thirst for peace and humanity have today became a living symbol of communal amity in Dharavi.

When they started, people had lost faith in each other; communities that shared spaces and experiences were erecting walls to keep their own side safe! This duo, working tirelessly at opening doors of communication, forcing people to sit together to discuss and dialogue on issues that caused misunderstandings, in a bid to work out local level solutions, explored novel possibilities.

“Our joint presence, coming as we do from two communities, works subtly and well, providing useful entry points and many advantages,” says Bhau Korde, while talking to Communalism Combat. “We are seen as representing our respective community and they appreciate this because we are the sane, sensitive and humane voice from the ‘other’ side.”

One of their first initiatives was to bring down the wall newly–erected between the communities. It took a whole month of confidential parleys, joint dialogues, insistence on communication. Through it all, Khan’s small shop, the local masjid, the church, the mandir served as the meeting points for the residents to bring their problems to; and, often, to take their solutions from.

Come 1998 and, once more, there was renewed tension. “It was a small matter,” says Korde, “that, as is usual, got blown out of all proportion”. The dispute was over the erection of a Ganapati mandap for installing the idol during Ganeshutsav, close to a part of Dharavi that has a significant Muslim population. The mandap was meant to be temporary, but Muslims felt that the mandap would lead to a permanent mandir that would then be a perpetual source of tension.

“Once both sides had sat face to face, the apprehensions were dealt with and the matter was cleared,” explains Korde. “Once reassured that the mandaps was to be temporary, Muslims even helped in its construction!”

Then, there are the recurrent tensions caused by the playing of music outside mosques at the time of the Ganapati procession, something that creates tensions in Dharavi as also anywhere else. “This practice has entered Dharavi since 1962 and is a potential source of tension,” recalls Korde. In 1996, Khan and Korde put their heads together to find some solution to this recurring conflict.

Months before the Ganesh festival, they requested a joint meeting of both communities and began discussions. “Our point was simple. Haan, aapko adhikar zaroor hai, magar ham sab saath rahte ha (Yes, you have a right to play the music. But is this not our shared space?) And look here, namaaz is for Muslims what pooja is for Hindus. So where is the harm, if out of sensitivity and respect for co–existence, we defer the playing of music during the times of namaaz? Is this not the basis for give and take that shared community living is all about?”

It took many weeks but as discussions continued genuine dialogue began. Finally, both sides were agreeable. Since 1996, this locally worked out axiom for mutual co-existence is being followed, more-or-less consistently, in Dharavi.
“With small but effective interventions like these, the entire mindset changes. When genuine dialogue of both communities is facilitated, none of the representatives are talking from a standpoint of ‘ours’ verses ‘theirs’, an unfortunate approach that dictates inter-community relations these days. Suddenly, we are looking collectively at solutions, keeping in mind the sensitivities and concerns of the ‘other’ side.”

Through these initiatives, the presence and persistence of Khan was pivotal. His reasoning with his own community, his insistence on listening to both sides finally broke the ice. “Our friendship was born out of the violence,” explains Korde. “I was utterly and deeply impressed by Khan’s outlook, his thoughts on tolerance and co-existence. He is a small businessman who has given so much. And he has so much more to contribute than many educated persons”.

“Mussalman hone ke naate unki soch ne mujhe hila diya, mujhe bahut prabhavit kiya. Ek saache Mussalman jinko apne dharam par shraddha hein, hamare samaj ko itna de sakte hein.” (“His views on various issues as a Muslim deeply impressed me. I realized how much a devout Muslim could contribute to our society”).

Khan was born in Bareli, UP to a small, working class family in 1965. At the age of 13, after passing his class VII examinations he came, in 1978, to Mumbai, the mecca of opportunities. His engagement with the city began as a pheriwala doing small business, roaming the city’s streets.

By 1991, he had risen, through sheer dint of hard work and enterprise, to the status of a successful small businessman/trader, which is how he is known in Dharavi today. He got himself married, sent his parents for the Haj pilgrimage. Even before 1992-1993, he used to engage in “chhota-mota social work”.

Korde, on the other hand, was born and brought up in Dharavi. Associated with the local school as a teacher, he had a wide acquaintance in the local community. He was deeply interested in the roots and ethnic origins of the communities that made up the huge melting pot that was Dharavi. “But after the riots everything changed and I realised that as someone who lived in Dharavi I have to concentrate on this issue of breakdown of relations between communities,” Korde reminisces.

“The critical issue is dialogue,” says Korde. “Hindus and Muslims are reacting to each other but not interacting enough with each other. That is how the same, small issues are becoming huge law and order problems. What we need is charcha (discussion) between the affected people and communities, not seminars and workshops! The Dharavi experience tells me that persons seeking solutions just do not speak enough with the people affected.”

Post-1992, Khan came up with a novel idea. He summoned the help of a like-minded photographer and captured an ideal image that symbolised his personal yearnings, in a still shot. He chose four young boys of similar age. One was a Hindu, the other Muslim, the third a Sikh and the fourth a Christian.

Dressed up like priests of their respective faiths, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, conveying a simple message: “Ham Sab Ek Hain!” Khan converted this image into tens of thousands of stickers that caught the image of the Mumbai police, too, at the time.

When the image became hugely popular, Khan made laminated posters of them. These posters find a pride of place in many of Mumbai’s police stations today. Adorning the walls behind the inspector-in-charge’s chair at police stations, they are a constant reminder to visitors of the need for unity among us.

Always looking ahead, Khan is today poised to take the ‘Ham Sab Ek Hain’ message to the silver screen. With guidance from his good friend Korde, he penned a script for a brief film on amity and harmony and, as testimony to his quiet audacity, has actually gone ahead and filmed it!

Shot on June 4, 2001, the film is now edited and ready for telecast but now the battle to get it aired on a channel for national viewing is on. The National Foundation for Communal Harmony is seriously considering using the short film as a spot to spread the message of communal harmony.

The funds for the stickers and the film? Profits earned from the small business of large-hearted Khan have gone into printing 50,000 ‘Ham sab ek hai’ stickers (in four-colour) and producing a three-minute film with the same message.
Some might think Khan is foolish, or even possessed. That he is. Possessed by his commitment to promote peace and toleration in Dharavi, and the rest of India. And no one ever told him to put his money where his mouth is.

This article was first published on Communalism Combat.
 

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Rabindranath Tagore, the composer of the poems that serve as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, wrote an essay on nationalism in which he asserted, “it is my conviction that my countrymen will gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.” In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

My concern, as I watched Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, was about how the film handles its central tension – between the values of humanity and patriotism.

The plot is, by now, well known: in 1971, with the Bangladesh war impending, the film’s protagonist Sehmat is approached by her father to take his place as an Indian spy who enjoys the confidence of the Pakistani military establishment. She agrees to the unusual arrangement: where she would be married to a Pakistani army officer Iqbal, who is himself the youngest son of a senior Pakistani army officer. The film follows this plotline to depart from the usual jingoism and demonization of Pakistan that usually marks spy thrillers. The Pakistanis in the film are humane, gentle, and upright, and the relationship between Sehmat and her husband Iqbal is tender and loving. Inevitably, then, the viewer finds it unusually difficult to empathise one-sidedly with the protagonist when she murders the family retainer who discovers that she is a spy, and then, to cover up that murder, cold-bloodedly follows orders from the Indian intelligence establishment and murders her brother-in-law who is on the verge of discovering the truth.

The viewer, like the protagonist herself, is torn with feelings of remorse for having caused such pain to her loving in-laws. She has sleepless nights, is haunted by the memory of the family retainer in her dreams, and is racked with sobs over and over at having had to kill her brother-in-law.

This tension is written into the script early on. During training, when Sehmat is taught by the Indian intelligence agent how to use a poison to ‘remove someone from the way’, she asks, ‘Remove someone? You mean kill someone?’ He responds, ‘Any problem?’ and she replies, ‘Shouldn’t I have a problem?’

The film disappoints in its resolution of this tension, because it falls short of courage. Instead of exploring the full moral and ethical implications of espionage and war, it falls back on formula: the reassuring idea that decent people of every country must inevitably jeopardise and betray every loving relationship (father-daughter, husband-wife) to obey the imperatives of espionage and war. Other commentators have already remarked on the fact that the film inverts the patriarchal notion that a woman, once married, takes on the identity and loyalties of her husband’s family: but is her father’s assumption that he has a right to use his daughter as a spy any less patriarchal? Sehmat answers her father’s doubts on this count by asking, why then do we send sons into war? That, indeed, is the profound question. But the film, after teetering on the brink of asking why war and espionage and its terrible human costs are inevitable – draws back from really looking into the abyss and facing the answers. It stops short of questioning the inevitability of wars that require the sacrifice of sons and daughters. It stops just short of asking hard questions about the ethical obligations of soldiers and spies in battle: should soldiers/spies follow orders to endanger or kill civilians and children and console themselves that such collateral damage is inevitable and permissible? This question is a serious one, that the world has made an attempt at answering. The Geneva Convention, for instance, that soldiers have “the right and duty not to obey” any order that involves violation of the Convention, for instance through custodial executions or forced disappearances. The film ‘The Reader’ explores the issue of the moral obligation of guards at a Nazi concentration camp to disobey orders they knew to be immoral. But Raazi turns away from these questions that stare it in the face.

The film has enough of tension between the impulses of humanity and patriotism to be extremely disturbing, however. Sehmat’s anger at her handler for ordering the killing of Iqbal (and the woman the handler thinks is Sehmat) is not assuaged by his answer, that “Many innocents are killed in war. In a war, nothing else matters but the war. Not you, not I, just the war.” She draws away, shaking her head tearfully and saying, “I can’t understand this world of yours – where there is no respect either for relationships or for life. I want to get out of this before I become completely like you. I want to go home.” Later, when she realises she is pregnant, she tells her mother, “I won’t abort Iqbal’s child. I can’t commit another murder.” The film also hints at the lasting mental trauma of the acts of violence and betrayal Sehmat committed: she is shown in an unknown bare room that could possibly be a mental asylum.

Were these acts of violence really needed by India? Did India really need to help ‘break off a piece of Pakistan’ (the phrase used by the Indian military officer in his speech in the opening shots of the film)? Whether we are Pakistani or Indian, must we not ask ourselves why our rulers demand that we sacrifice our humanity at the altar of ‘patriotic’ wars? Must we not seek to redefine love for our country in a way that makes it compatible with peace in the world?

The Pakistani army officers, shown laughing at Bangladesh’s demand for independence from Pakistan, point out that ‘mukti’ in the name Mukti Bahini refers to ‘azaadi’ (freedom). That, again, is a tantalising reminder of the cries of azaadi in Kashmir. In a film which showcases a Kashmiri woman as a postergirl of Indian patriotism, this scene could, possibly, serve to subtly nudge the discerning viewer to ask why India enabled Bangladesh’s azaadi from Pakistan but brands it intolerable even to give a sympathetic ear to the cry for azaadi for Kashmir.

Unfortunately, though, the film resolves this tension with the anodyne conclusion that country is, indeed, greater than the ideals of humanity: Sehmat’s and Iqbal’s son ends up as an officer in the Indian armed forces, and while the forces are encouraged to remember the human costs of war, the implication is that these consequences are tragic but inevitable. “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die” – or kill, as it may be – this is the message the viewer is left with. I suspect, though, that the discomforts the film generates are too strong to be appeased with this message. This is a spy film, a war film, after all, that leaves you recalling the tragedy of the death of the ‘enemy’ soldier Iqbal for hours after you leave the hall. This is a film that has no antagonist, no villain whose downfall we are able to contemplate with satisfaction. You could imagine a ‘Strange Meeting’ between Sehmat and Iqbal, in which the latter tells the former, “I am the enemy you killed, my friend” – in the words of the great anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting.

As I write about Raazi, I recalled an exchange from the last few pages of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose set in an abbey in medieval Europe. Adso, the acolyte, asks Brother William
 

Isn’t affirming God’s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?

What follows is this:
 

William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, “How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?”
I did not understand the meaning of his words. “Do you mean,” I asked, “that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?”

I wonder if, in our country today, questions about the human costs, ethical implications, and necessity of war and espionage can only be raised while genuflecting to the idea that patriotism must trump humanity. If so, we have moved backwards from the times of Rabindranath Tagore, who even as an anti-colonial freedom struggle was raging, could assert that humanity was greater than country – without being subjected to hateful abuse branding him ‘anti-national’.                  

Kavita Krishnan is Secretary, AIPWA, and Politburo member of the CPI(ML)

Courtesy: kafila.online
 

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